How are sites using user-generated forum posts to rank?

[Estrid]

So I noticed a bit of trend recently with many longtail keywords ending with reddit, quora or relevant niche forum. With people trying to target them despite obviously not being those specific websites.

The site owners will just scrape entire posts add in pictures, headers and a little tlc then write in a credit link to the original poster.

I thought google hated this type of content? The site below is 1 and half years old.

Just one example of this:






My only guess so far is that site the steal the content from doesn't index well initially. If they can scrape articles then they get ranked first.

 

[RRunner]

I thought google hated this type of content?

You have been mislead.

 

[Estrid]

I thought if you regularly publish duplicate content, Google will slow down the crawling rate of your website? Or is that just a seo myth.

 

[RRunner]

Google is just an algorithm.

When Google says "duplicate content" they mean content on the same site that has not been properly identified with canonical tags/settings.

When SEO Gurus say "duplicate content" they mean stolen, copied or scraped from other websites. Not the same thing as Google's definition.

The Google algorithm cannot easily determine which site is the owner of the content. Especially if the different versions are published around the same time.

Google also has trouble determining if the content is stolen or merely syndicated. Or republished by the same author.

Say I write an article that I own the rights to as the author and I first publish it on my own little blog. Then republish it on Medium. Then republish it on Reddit. Then republish it as a post on my favorite niche related forum.

None of the versions are "stolen". They are all mine.

How does Google determine which is the "original" since Medium and Reddit are probably crawled and indexed before the forum and my little blog (the original source).

If you steal someone's content they can get your version de-indexed with a dmca report. If they can prove authorship.

If you apply for adsense you could get a thin content or low quality rejection. But that determination is not made by the Google algorithm.

People complain about their content being stolen and then outranking their own site. Clearly other factors than the uniqueness of the content are used to rank.

Of course there are opposing opinions...

 

[hideath]

interesting,
i've seen websites ranking pretty well with copied content from different sources,
other websites ranking for amazon affiliate with scraped content from amazon (multiple products per page),
yet, never seen exact match content ranking outside the movie niche, but i believe this could work for low difficulty keywords,
maybe you could share the website URL, here or in pm

 

[Balimourya]

Google is just an algorithm.

When Google says "duplicate content" they mean content on the same site that has not been properly identified with canonical tags/settings.

When SEO Gurus say "duplicate content" they mean stolen, copied or scraped from other websites. Not the same thing as Google's definition.

The Google algorithm cannot easily determine which site is the owner of the content. Especially if the different versions are published around the same time.

Google also has trouble determining if the content is stolen or merely syndicated. Or republished by the same author.

Say I write an article that I own the rights to as the author and I first publish it on my own little blog. Then republish it on Medium. Then republish it on Reddit. Then republish it as a post on my favorite niche related forum.

None of the versions are "stolen". They are all mine.

How does Google determine which is the "original" since Medium and Reddit are probably crawled and indexed before the forum and my little blog (the original source).

If you steal someone's content they can get your version de-indexed with a dmca report. If they can prove authorship.

If you apply for adsense you could get a thin content or low quality rejection. But that determination is not made by the Google algorithm.

People complain about their content being stolen and then outranking their own site. Clearly other factors than the uniqueness of the content are used to rank.

Of course there are opposing opinions...

I totally agree with you man